Bistrica Castle also known as Slovenska Bistrica Castle, is a renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 palace

Palace

A palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop. The word itself is derived from the Latin name Palātium, for Palatine Hill, one of the seven hills in Rome. In many parts of Europe, the...

 outside the town of Slovenska Bistrica

Slovenska Bistrica

Slovenska Bistrica is a town and a municipality south of Maribor in eastern Slovenia. It is one of the largest municipalities in Slovenia. Traditionally the area was part of the Lower Styria region. The municipality is now included in the Drava statistical region. The town was established in the...

 in eastern Slovenia

Slovenia

Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...

. Its name derives from the Slovene word "bistra," "clear."

History

The predecessor of the current Bistrica castle is first mentioned in 1265, when emperor Rudolf gave it and the adjoining town in fief to count (from 1286 duke of Carinthia

Carinthia (province)

Slovenian Carinthia or Slovene Carinthia, most commonly simply Carinthia is a traditional region in the north of Slovenia. It has no official status as an administrative unit within Slovenia, although the association with an informal province is still quite common.The region is referred to as...

) Meinhard of Gorizia

County of Gorizia

The County of Görz was a county based around the town of Gorizia in the present-day Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of north-eastern Italy.Count Meinhard, descendant of the Bavarian Meinhardiner noble family with possessions around Lienz in Tyrol, is mentioned as early as 1107...

. In 1313 it passed to the Habsburgs, who leased the castle and town to the noble house of Walsee. After 1368 the lordship was obtained by the counts of Celje; after their extinction in 1456 it reverted to the ducal lands. In 1587 the town and castle were bought by Hans Vetter; in 1717 the castle only was sold to the counts Attems, who retained until the end of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, when it was nationalized.

During the Attems tenure, the castle was the home of the painter and historian Maria Attems.

Architecture

The mansion is located on the northwest side of the mediaeval old town of Slovenska Bistrica. Rebuilt into a renaissance mansion in the 17th century, the foundations of the current building adjoin one of the defensive towers of its fortified predecessor.

The layout is trapezoid

Trapezoid

In Euclidean geometry, a convex quadrilateral with one pair of parallel sides is referred to as a trapezoid in American English and as a trapezium in English outside North America. A trapezoid with vertices ABCD is denoted...

al, with a turret

Turret

In architecture, a turret is a small tower that projects vertically from the wall of a building such as a medieval castle. Turrets were used to provide a projecting defensive position allowing covering fire to the adjacent wall in the days of military fortification...

 at each corner and an arcaded inner courtyard. The entire building is surrounded with a moat, now dry. The surrounding estate was planted with rare trees, now neglected, and a hornbeam tree row. The Attems decorated the interior in the early 18th century; the castle features a painted staircase, a chapel

Chapel

A chapel is a building used by Christians as a place of fellowship and worship. It may be part of a larger structure or complex, such as a church, college, hospital, palace, prison or funeral home, located on board a military or commercial ship, or it may be an entirely free-standing building,...

dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and a richly appointed great hall.

Sources

• http://www.zavod-ksb.si/grad.htm
• http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/viktorajd/zgodovina.html&date=2009-10-25+23:58:21